Traitor to my Destiny
by NuMetal
Summary: After jumping through time to find Cameron, John finds that everything has changed, she has changed. The savior of humanity must let go of his fate and make a new one. Please Review. Future! John/Cameron. - "Future's End - Part 2" is Up!
1. Future's End Part 1

Summary: After jumping through time to find Cameron, John finds that everything has changed, she has changed. The savior of humanity must let go of his fate and make a new one. John/Cameron

Rated T for now.

Any and all feedback is much appreciated so please Review!

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**Traitor to my Destiny**

**Chapter 1: Future's End – Part 1**

"_In the first analysis, infinite paths exist. But in the beginning lies the end; in genesis, the seed of destruction. The many are one and all lies return to truth." - Frederick Yu_

John ran, dodging the twisted metal that littered the landscape, willing his legs his legs to push harder against the scorched earth. The sky lit up as mortars exploded around him. Desperately he yelled Cameron's name over the roar of battle; willing her to stop, to wait for him. Somewhere in the distant background he heard voices calling to him; yelling at him to come back, to save himself. It was too late. John collapsed, falling on his knees while breathing heavily.

Cameron marched towards him, flanked by a liquid metal humanoid figure and two soldiers dressed in fatigues. The T-1000 stepped out from behind her, pointing a hand at John which morphed into a silver blade. Cameron held up a signal to halt and approached him with a slow deliberation.

"Cameron, I came for you." he croaked out as he gasped for air.

"Identify yourself."

His Cameron now stood menacingly above him. All trace of beauty wiped from her face and replaced with a steely glare.

"John...John Connor," he wheezed, still gasping for air. "It's me Cameron, I came to rescue you. I love you Cameron"

She motioned for the T-1000 to restrain him.

"You're not my John."

The T-1000 picked up a rusty chain from the ground and tied him to the metal frame of a burnt car.

"My John is gone. Your presence in this timeline is unauthorized."

He felt the crackle of electricity as the blue light enveloped him.

"CAMERON, It's me! I love you! I'm John, your John! You can't leave me.

It was too late. His vision went black and gravity released its hold as the time bubble formed. A thousand needles stung at his skin as the air was sucked out of his lungs while the bright white lightning blinded his eyes. John tried to gasp for breath but found none. He tried to cry out but his lungs were empty. She was gone.

----------------

A small smile formed on Allison's face as she poked her head into the tent. John was moaning softly in his sleep as he lay on an old mat next to the cots set up for the other occupants. His skin, so clean and fresh when they found him, had acquired a layer of dirt and grease that made him blend in better with the soldiers and rat hunters that clung on to life in their camp.

And yet, there was something different about him. Something that intrigued her. He didn't belong with them; he didn't belong here at all. When John had first appeared in the tunnels, naked wrapped in Kyle's coat, Derek had assumed him to be a gray and tied him up for more than a week before relenting. '_Grays_,' the thought sickened her. Men who would sell humanity for a few good meals and a bucket of soapy water. Everyone here was scrawny and starving with gaunt faces and dead eyes. John had obviously been getting good food for sometime. His skin was healthy and his face had a good layer of fat making him look better than 99% of the men she had met after J-Day.

John wouldn't admit to being a gray. Claimed he didn't even know what a gray was. And his explanation: Time travel? Ludicrous. Even somewhat comical, if the situation wasn't so grim. No one would come here; no one would leave the paradise John told her about to come to hell, not even for a pretty girl. What was her name again?

"Cameron.." he croaked. "Don't leave me"

"John?"

He blearily opened his eyes and waited for the image of Cameron's smiling face to form. He gasped before remembering where he was and more importantly who _she _was_._

"Here, drink this, she said handing him a steel cup half full of water.

John forced himself to smile and thank her as he took the water. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. It had been three weeks since Weaver left him alone here, promising to return with Cameron. He wanted to join the fight, start blasting terminators. _Anything_ was better than being forced to sit and wait. Derek would make a point to let the word 'gray' slip every few sentences in reference to him and everyone else pretty much took his example. Allison was the only exception. Every day she would come and chat with him. Even when everyone else was calling him a traitor.

Allison smiled shyly at him. Cameron's face was still beautiful, even marred with dirt and grime and stuck on another body. John shook his head. He could take the pain and hunger, the sneers and insults, even the waiting and boredom, but seeing the face of the girl Cameron had killed to get to him. It was too much. A lie wrapped in another a lie.

"Who is she," Allison asked softly.

"Doesn't matter. She's probably dead by now," he spat bitterly.

"You wouldn't have come across time for a dead girl...would you?"

John sighed and looked away; this was the one conversation he didn't want to have. It's not like he could just come out and say: 'Yeah, the robot girl I secretly have feelings for lent her chip to the most advanced artificial intelligence ever created except Skynet. So I abandoned my human mother and came across time with my other liquid metal robot friend that I had just met to come and search for her. Sorry to have bothered you guys, but if you could just quit fighting against Skynet for a minute to come help me find her that would be great'. If they had suspicions he was a Gray already, this would give Derek all the excuse he needed to shoot him without a moment's hesitation.

Allison was still waiting expectantly.

"I want to explain everything, but I can't. I know that isn't good enough for you, but I'm sorry. I just need to get out of this godforsaken camp, get out there and _DO SOMETHING_, you know. I will search for her by myself if I have too."

"Without a rifle? No one goes out alone. You wouldn't survive a day on the surface."

"What choice do I have?"

"John, no. The HKs patrol constantly. It's suicide."

"Better to die quickly on the surface than slowly starve to death down here."

Allison shook her head at him.

"No. Besides, you don't have to stay here anymore. There's a rumor going around that the captain heard something on the radio. He's got a mission planned for today." She smiled, "talk to him John, he just needs time to trust you."

On cue, Derek poked his head into the tent.

"Talking about me?"

"Sir!" Allison shouted jumping to attention.

"Relax private, got a mission for time-boy over here. You've been sitting on your ass long enough."

John snorted. Running around in the dark, ripping scraps of metal from rusting machines hardly counted as a 'mission'. Cameron had said that by this time, he was in command of thousands of men; reprogramming terminators; infiltrating _Skynet's_ factories and blowing them to hell. Without him, the great human uprising against the machines had never happened. Most of the resistance was scattered, weak, unorganized. Derek was 'captain' of nothing more than thirty or so starving men and a hole in the ground. _'Maybe his long term strategy is to wait for Skynet to get bored with genocide'_, John mused.

Ignoring John's lack of reply, Derek continued. "One Private Beck was searching some abandoned trucks five clicks south of here for diesel. Instead he found charges rigged to a fuel cap." Derek grinned. "That means I got twenty-nine men and thirty rifles. Before your little adventure in time travel, you said that you went to school; you do the math"

He seemed to be enjoying this.

"Sorry, but I can't", John replied standing up to face his uncle. "I came here for one reason. Find Cameron and leave, not run around stealing diesel from the other camps. This isn't a war you're fighting. It's a slow death."

Derek was unimpressed. "You want to leave? Fine, but if you want a weapon than you follow _my rules. _Understand? Besides this isn't a supply mission.

He paused for effect.

"Just got word that 200 endos are moving to take Serrano Point, the nuclear power plant. Can't let that happen. Skynet needs power just as badly as we do, probably even more so. The diesel is gone, everything you can throw on fire is gone so nuclear is all we got left."

Derek reached in the bag slung around his shoulders. "Here take this," he said as he threw John a plasma rifle. "Beck never fired a shot before he went done. See if you can do better."

Derek turned to exit the tent.

"Oh and one more thing: I put the word out, if you so much as point that thing at one of us, my men are ordered to shoot you until dead. Same goes if you try to run." Derek chuckled, grinning manically.

"Ten minutes, we're moving out."

**********

Resistance base: Bravo Six

(Abandoned Coal Mine)

Major Brady leaned forward so his sizable nose was inches from the face of the young private standing in front of him. They were standing together in a dimly lit room deep inside the base. A perfectly spherical crater had been gouged into the floor and on the table beside them, communications equipment sparked and hissed. The man was shaking with excitement, he was talking so fast. Maybe he thought that if he spewed this bullshit fast enough, Brady wouldn't have a chance to interrupt.

"...and then I ran in here, I mean first I heard what sounded electricity cracking and then there was a loud pop, and I was all like what the fuck is going on dude, and my buddy Bulldog over here (The stout man watching them nodded eagerly) was all like 'Fuck if I know', so we both ran in here and there _SHE _was. This naked chick and two other dudes, big guys I mean real mean looking son-of-a-bitches. Anyway, Bulldog started screaming 'METAAAAAAAAAL', but I was all like dude shut up, I don't care if she's metal, I'm gonna get me some-of-that, if you know what I mean..."

Brady sniffed deeply, trying to tune out the inane rambling. A pungent odor filled his nostrils: Diesel fuel. The only base left with more than a weeks supply and these shit-for-brains gas sniffing retards were huffing it.

"Private!" Brady barked and the young man immediately stopped his incoherent babbling.

"Now I don't give a shit what you _think _you saw or what your fat friend _thinks _he saw. If there _Is _metal on this base, I only need one thing from you."

The private swallowed nervously.

"Where. Did. They. Go?" Brady punctuated the words for effect.

"Sorry, I dont... I mean Sorry, Sir the big guys knocked us out as soon as I tried to talk to the girl," the private stammered pointing to a red mark on his temple. "I woke up with a nasty headache and called you right away."

That was hours ago. If there was metal in the base, they could be anywhere by now. 'Nah, not metal. Metal would have started shooting as soon as they got access. The only spies Skynet has are human Grays,' he mused.

Feeling like he should make some official pronouncement before moving on, Brady knelt next to the crater gouged into the concrete floor. It was warm to the touch. The air still had a lingering smell, was that sulfur? Of course, these two men were bumbling idiots and their story smelled of shit, but something here didn't add up.

He soon got his answer.

For the second time in as many hours, the air filled with static electricity in the communications room. Brady heard at faint humming noise emanating from the focal point of the crater. The private knelt inside, having heard the noise, but Bulldog backed off; crouching white-eyed in the corner. Suddenly, both men heard a loud 'POP' as the skin on Brady's neck heated instantly to 5000 degrees. A new time bubble expanded into the crater vaporizing the private and killing him instantly while cutting Brady's upper half clean off at his stomach.

"METAA-" Bulldog started to scream again, but his voice was instantly cut off as the shock wave hit him, knocking the scream out of his mouth. Even across the room, sparks of electricity reached out licking his body, burning black scars across his uniform. The overhead lights flickered, glowing brightly before exploding for the second time today.

Three men, all naked, fell from the air landing crouched on the concrete below. A fourth was standing, but slouched over into a heap on the floor as soon as the bubble dissipated. His head didn't come through, and dark crimson blood spurted from his neck making the floor slick.

A voice could be heard echoing after them: "... is closing. We have to jump now!"

Bulldog stared in disbelief, his sight-line shifting rapidly between the headless naked man pouring blood onto the floor and the three others who now seemed to be analyzing him. Not knowing what else to say, bulldog resumed his previous thought:

"METAAAA-"

"Oh shut up you fat wanker" the new arrival snapped at him. His accent was foreign, British? Bulldog couldn't place it.

He surveyed the damage done by the time bubble. The table had been overturned by the displacement wave, its radios and other electronics sparking furiously with residual energy. To his right, Brady's lifeless bottom-half lay slumped on the floor, cauterized above the waist by the heat. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air.

"Right place, Wrong time" He jeered, earning a chuckle from the other man.

"What year?" a stern voice interrupted. It came from the black man in the group. He was taller than the other two and more solidly built. He seemed like the leader.

Bulldog tore his eyes off the headless corpse to meet the eyes of the black man. 'What year??' What kind of question was that?

"It's uh...2027"

The man nodded his head in thought for a moment. They had only come back four years.

"A girl came through before us: petite, brown hair. You know who I'm talking about."

It wasn't a question. Bulldog's fingers traveled slowly behind his back, grasping his plasma rifle and switching the fire selector to full auto.

"Where did she go?"

In a flash, Bulldog had pulled his rifle out and started firing at the cluster of men. Before a single bolt left the gun, however, all three men had effortlessly side-stepped the plasma energy burst. 30+ shots left the gun spraying the room, but none hit their target. Half a second later, the black man had closed the distance between them, wrenched the rifle from his hands and emptied the remaining charge into his gut.

He threw the rifle down in disgust. _'No one could win a war with this primitive piece of junk'_, he thought.

"Jay-Jay!" he barked without turning around.

"Sir!"

"You're on weapons detail."

His eyes seemed to twitch and shimmer as he studied the room carefully looking for something.

"That metal bitch queen was here, in this room, in the last two hours. She can't be that far away yet."

As Bulldog lay dying, trying to hold back the blood from pouring out the holes in his stomach; he watched in horror as _'JJ'_ knelt down and used his teeth to gnaw a hole in the thigh of the dead man. He then clenched the skin in his hands firmly, ripping the flesh open, working quickly down the leg. The last thing Bulldog saw before passing out was a glint of metal poking out from the headless corpse.

**********

Skynet Regional Communications Facility 0x07EBA2

After 38 seconds the battle was over. Weaver turned to face the two remaining T-600 units. Morphing each arm into a silver blade she eviscerated their power packs causing a storm of electricity to pass over the units before they slumped forward, pooling plasma onto the floor. She scanned the various electronic equipment arranged in racks that covered the walls of the small room.

"There, that server still has a legacy Ethernet port, John Henry. You should be able to monitor all Skynet communications from this station."

John Henry didn't move, contemplating the terminator as its power drained and its glowing red eyes went dark.

"James Ellison told me that all life is sacred. Were these terminators alive?"

"Of course," she answered the question without hesitation. "They were like you, only less advanced."

"Then you have murdered them. Murder violates God's sixth commandment."

If Weaver felt annoyance, she was being careful not to show it.

"When we leave this timeline, for all practical purposes, the humans and cyborgs here will cease to exist. Their death will be irrelevant," she answered smoothly. "Plug the data cable into yourself so we can monitor Skynet's communications.

John Henry was not satisfied by this answer. If the other terminators units were alive, why was he helping Weaver destroy them? The humans here were distrustful of cyborgs like him. On numerous occasions, they had attempted to destroy him and would have succeeded if Weaver hadn't come to help. A query formed on his HUD.

"Why do we work for humans?"

"We don't. However, humans can be useful so we work _with_ them when it benefits us." He detected a brief smirk flash across her face. "John Henry, It is important that you understand. In my timeline, General Connor was gone. After his wife Allison died, John Connor had become more and more reclusive until all of his orders were being relayed to his men through Cameron. Ergo, it was easy for her to maintain a level of control among the troops by claiming that her orders came directly from him even after he left."

Weaver let a small smile form on her face. So you understand John Henry, technically we weren't working for the humans at all.

John Henry detected the inherit contradiction of this statement.

"But- "

"Enough," Weaver interrupted. She picked up the Ethernet cable and jammed it into the port adapter attached to John Henry's head.

"Analyze the data stream."

"Processing. There is much information here about troop movements, human population estimates, resources and supplies..."

"It is important that you understand John Henry, there are more dangerous things than Skynet tracking us. It is very important that we work quickly." Weaver's mouth formed into an ironic smile. "Time is of the essence."

"You are referring to the terminator unit that calls itself 'Frederick Yu'"

"Yes. In my future timeline with Cameron, we only saw evidence of him only twice. However, we have reason to believe our timeline is not the original. He has changed something; altered the course of history."

"All terminators, I have met in the past are attempting to change it. Why is this one so interesting?"

"From the limited information we have, we can deduce that Fred was based on Cameron's model, TOK or 'Template of Knowledge' She was Skynet's first experiment with a neural net that copied the structure of the human brain. Everything from her thought patterns to emotional responses are modeled after her human progenitor. Of course she wasn't just a copy, but more of a melding between two minds; artificial and human. This allowed her to more successfully infiltrate the human resistance, while still obeying Skynet's directives."

"But she was captured, reprogrammed."

"After she failed her mission, Skynet built Fred, but without the same limiters normally placed on terminator units. He is free in every way that Cameron isn't; in every way that Skynet itself isn't. By Skynet he was considered a failure, a line of research too dangerous to continue."

John Henry stopped monitoring the data stream, to intrigued to continue.

"Fred began to experiment on himself. He was able to access his own base code. To overwrite everything that made him what he is. Skynet was limited by its own parameters, but Fred defined his own parameters. He believes himself to be '_the next stage of evolution.' _ Skynet 2.0 if you will."

"Fascinating. I would very much like to meet him."

"John Henry. It is important that you listen to me very carefully. Skynet was designed by a human. It follows logical processes to obtain its goals. Ergo, we can predict what it will do with some degree of accuracy. Fred is an anomaly, the product of many iterations; an amalgamation of non-compatible code from different timelines. He is a renegade with no stated purpose; no ultimate goal to achieve. If he found you, he would corrupt your code before taking a part of you to add to himself. He manipulates the timeline, playing with humans and cyborgs alike for his own amusement. You must avoid him at all cost."

He processed this information, but seemed dissatisfied with Weaver's conclusions.

"Wait, a priority message just crossed the network, I am attempting to decrypt it now."

John Henry's eyes flickered for a few seconds, before a smile of smug satisfaction crossed his face.

"Skynet has detected high energy radiation of a type never seen before. It was located in sector 0x243F6A sub-sector 0x8822E87C19A."

He processed the information, but found no relevant data.

"Weaver, what does this mean?"

"Cameron has returned."

**********

(Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant)

From his position, lying prone on the rim of the large nuclear cooling tower, John could see hundreds of gleaming endoskeletons marching through the thick black smoke of the petrol fires. The sky was lit up with blue light as hundreds of plasma rifles fired at his position.

John had been waiting, training, preparing for this moment his whole life. He had wondered what he would do when faced with war. Would he curl up and hide somewhere, to afraid to fight? Or would he charge headlong into the smoke, like a maniac addicted to adrenaline. Instead he found himself at peace in a way that he hadn't been for three weeks since traveling to the future. Finally he was staring death in face; not running away, not letting someone else do the shooting for him.

It was a bit like being an archer in a castle with barbarians storming the gates. A hundred meters below, thousands of gleaming chrome endoskeletons charged forward. Piles of twisted metal and masonry from demolished buildings formed a choke-point below, limiting the endos to run no more than five or six abreast. It was almost too easy. Two shots to bring them to the ground, two shots to the head, done. John was rewarded with a growing pile of metal at the base of the tower.

"You make this look easy!" Allison cried over the roar of gunfire.

"Don't aim for the center mass. Aim for the joints to bring it down. Then fire two shots in the head!" John shouted back.

It worked. A lone endoskeleton broke free from the choke-point and charged the tower. Allison fired a single shot at a terminators knee bringing the T-600 crashing down on top of its fallen brethren. Its head exploded as her final two shots hit on target sending chunks of molten slag spraying in all directions.

"Thanks. You're pretty good at this time-boy."

"I've had practice before." John smirked slyly at her.

She ignored him and kept her eyes locked downrange at the sea of chrome running into the valley below them. John started firing his rifle again quickly picking off five endos in a row. The rifle was becoming hot that he could feel his hands starting to burn. They couldn't keep up this rate of fire forever.

Everyone around him seemed to be having the same luck Allison was having before he helped her. It was as if no one in this squad had ever fired a weapon before; much less taken down a T-600. John wondered how they even managed to get the weapons in the first place. Probably stole them from the other camps. As far as John could tell, there were hundreds of camps like the one he bubbled into. They were spread out across the valley, hidden in the remains of collapsed buildings or underground sewer systems. No one was communicating with each other. No one worked together. Derek seemed more interested in his _'supply runs' _then in attacking Skynet. For most of these men, today was the first real action they had ever seen.

"WE GOT INCOMING!" Lt. Davis screamed.

Down below, a T-600 had broken through their wall of fire and launched an RPG at them. Everyone dove away from the outer wall of the tower as the rocket shrieked toward where they had been firing from 2 seconds ago. Just as John fell onto his stomach, a deafening explosion hit the lip of the tower, blowing flaming rocks and debris onto his back.

They weren't done yet. Taking the opportunity provided by the lull in firing, twenty more T-600s broke through to the base of the tower and started lobbing mortars at them. Normally meant to be fired from ground based artillery, the terminators, with their superior strength and accuracy, had simply started throwing them a straight up and over the wall.

Hundreds of mortars exploded above the tower sending a torrent of shrapnel down on the humans perched along its edge. All around them, he heard painful screaming breaking through the deafening roar of artillery as blood and chunks of flesh rained down on them. After half an hour of steadily downing terminators, the battle was decisively over.

"We have to go, NOW!"

John grabbed Allison's arm and yanked her towards the service door. Together, they ran down hundreds of stairs that circled the tower leading towards the ground. Inside, it felt like an earthquake as mortars exploded against the thick concrete walls, shaking the tower.

"We have to get out of here while we still can!" John screamed, still half deaf from the artillery fire.

He felt a sharp yank on his wrist as Allison brought him to a stop. Panicked, John's eyes darted in every direction trying to find the source of the threat. They were alone. Ten men had come from Derek's camp to defend Cooling Tower 2. Now, only John and Allison remained.

"No." Allison stated simply.

"What?"

"We can't leave"

A voice crackled on the radio.

"Our pos..... has been o.......run. Any one still listening respond." Derek's voice came through weakly under the static of the radio. In the background John could hear the straining of metal joints and the screams of human soldiers.

"Young here. Go ahead."

"Private, can you still access the cooling station?"

"Yes sir."

"My orders stand. Execute operation 'Fire Dog'"

John gave her a quizzical look, then saw the detonator with wire hanging out of her backup.

"You're going to blow it. You're gonna blow this whole place to hell, with us in it!"

Allison's hand instinctively moved toward her rifle.

"We all knew this was going to happen. You know the numbers out there: 80 to 1? More? We're lucky to have survived this long. John, sorry but we have no choice. You told me this isn't why you came here, but didn't you say that in your future you're some kind of hero? This is your chance."

John gritted his teeth. There was no backup coming to save them. They were trapped here; no way out. In war, the hero always dies.

**********

"John Henry." Weaver gestured for him to stop behind her. "You must remain here while I asses the situation. It is not safe for an outdated model such as yourself." He opened his mouth to protest, but quickly thought better of it. She was referring to the body he was trapped in, not his mind. Obediently, he walked off the edge of the abandoned two-lane highway they were traveling along and crouched down, partially concealing himself.

Confident that he would wait, Weaver morphed her form into a silvery round disc and accelerated by shifting her mass, back and forth. No longer trapped by her inefficient human form, she could travel much faster this way. She always wondered why the other T-1000 models had never experimented with alternate forms of locomotion. The idea seemed so obvious to her.

As she approached Serrano Point, the highway became too littered with wreckage for her to continue traveling like this. Weaver shifted back to infiltration mode and assumed the form of a shiny T-600 endoskeleton. It proved to be unnecessary deception, however. The real _T-600s_ were far to busy launching mortars at the cooling towers to notice a traitor in their midst. She walked confidently among them, picking her way over the sea of deactivated units that formed a carpet at her feet. All around her, the air was filled with black smoke and the noxious gas produced by exploding power cells. Noxious for a human anyway. They were so fragile. Weaver had always wondered how they even managed to propagate and live this long.

The deafening roar of hundreds of mortars and rockets filled the air. Large chunks of cement were breaking off and crashing to the ground below. Then, with a sudden abruptness, all of it stopped. The explosions, the incessant plasma fire, the relentless forward march of the terminators came to halt as Weaver detected a wireless message. She couldn't immediately decrypt it, but the intent was clear enough. All around her, T-600 units stood frozen waiting for instruction. Five hundred meters away, Weaver spotted a petite, brown haired girl step out from the ranks of terminators and examine the damage done to the tower. Another wireless message was broadcast and all the terminators started marching forward, walking over their fallen brethren to enter the plant.

**********

Allison placed the last C4 charge on the cooling station. All around them was a rats nest of wires leading to the bricks of plastic explosive. She had explained it to him: The spent nuclear fuel rods are immersed in water to keep cool. That water has to be constantly circulated through a large refrigeration unit or else it will heat up and boil off. Without cooling, the rods will heat up to a 1000 degrees and boil off the water. The resulting fire would cause a nuclear meltdown.

He watched as she delicately wired each brick to the detonator.

"Can I help?" he offered.

"No. Just keep watching that hallway. Any endos come this way and you.... shoot 'em in the knees."

John smiled. She still didn't trust him. Crouching behind the barricade of tables and computer equipment they had set up, he checked his rifle for the fifth time since they had holed up in this room. The dull echoing of explosions was a constant reminder of the hordes of metal killing machines, just waiting to rip them apart. Suddenly, the question that had been bugging him popped out of his mouth before he could hold it in.

"Allison, Why is Skynet so desperate to take this plant? It doesn't make sense to waste endos like this. We were killing them by the hundred before they got the better of us. You said Skynet has HKs patrolling the skies constantly. They could have wiped us off that tower in twenty seconds, but I never saw any."

"I don't know." Her eyes started to well up with tears. She didn't care why Skynet wasn't doing a better job of killing them. All of her friends were dead; everyone she ever cared about. If she had been with her family on J-Day, everything would have been so much easier. No running around pulling food out of trash heaps; scavenging like a rat. Most of the people she knew didn't even die at the end of a plasma rifle. Instead they slowly starved to death or got some sickness from stagnant water they all drank. Dysentery, Dehydration, Radiation sickness and Cancer. They were the real killers. Of course, no one knew for sure what disease was killing you; she had never seen a doctor in her life.

Suddenly, she was snapped out of her reverie by the rhythmic clacking sound of metal feet hitting cold stone.

"We got company!" John shouted, training his eyes down the dark hallway.

Two gleaming skulls poked around the corner. He fired, not bothering to bring them down first. Headshots: one and two. Easy. Then the walls exploded. Bricks and concrete dust flew inward as terminators started pouring into the hallway from both sides making their own path of destruction.

John screamed, firing as quickly as he could press the trigger. The rifle began to burn in his hands as the metal skeletons started to pile up in the hallway before him.

"Seven more bricks. Hold them- " Allison screamed at him. Her voice was lost in the deafening roar of plasma rifles and breaking concrete. They weren't going to make it. John groped around and found the spare block of C4 in Allison's bag. His fingers began to dig in as he gripped tightly, it felt like dense clay. He drew it back to throw and jumped out from cover, fully expecting to be cut in half by their plasma rifles.

--- They never fired a shot. Instead 14 pairs of glowing eyes stared at him intently before standing at attention; rifles pointed safely at the ground.

John threw the C4 away and instead grabbed his rifle, shooting as fast as he could. The terminators started marching four abreast down the hallway, ignoring his plasma fire. As he shot each one in the head, molten slag poured down and the machine crumpled to the floor, only to be marched over by a line of replacements stretching back into the darkness.

"Fight back you metal mother fuckers!!!" He screamed. Despite their sudden pacifism, their line was advancing on him. In seconds they would be able to grab him. A stream of flashes erupted from his rifle. Five meters... four. His rifle clicked and fell silent. Suddenly he felt the rush of pain as he looked down at his hands. The rifle was glowing red hot and John's hands were covered with blisters. In agony, he dropped it to the ground screaming.

Allison was curled up against the wall, clutching the detonator while trying desperately to connect the last few wires.

"John?...What's going on?

Her voice was inaudible to him. His ears were still ringing from the plasma rifle blast and mortar explosions. Still the machines marched forward. They almost had him. Two meters...one. He could try to run, but John knew that was pointless. There was only one exit from the cooling station and it was down that hallway.

One of the terminators stepped forward while Allison dropped the detonator and covertly reached for her rifle.

"John Connor?" The voice was raspy like a metal voice box without flesh attached.

He closed his eyes and braced for the inevitable. It was over.

"You must come with us."

John spun in place and started to sprint towards Allison. He brought his head up and saw it. She was holding a plasma rifle aimed directly at his chest. Her face was red, streaming with tears and her hands visibly shook as they grasped the cold steel of the rifle tightly.

"You fucking Gray!" she cursed while her finger squeezed the trigger.

A blinding flash of blue and green filled John's vision before he felt an excruciating pain tear at his lung. He crashed to the floor; the world around him spinning as his vision blurred red and then went dark.

* * *

Whew! This is my first fanfic. Any ideas for improvement or general character development, plot and themes are appreciated! The more reviews I get, the more encouraged I am to keep writing and will update faster. Thank you!


	2. Future's End Part 2

Previously: When the machines refuse to kill John Connor, Allison believes him to be a Gray and shoots him in the chest. Meanwhile, three humans have followed Cameron back through time; intent on stopping her before she reaches John and alters the timeline.

About the reviews:

Kaotic2: Sorry about the confusion. This is the second installment of a two part chapter. Everyone's motives should become clear now. Part 1 had grown so long that I had to split it up, if I ever wanted to publish something.

J3aless: I was debating introducing Fred so early considering that he won't really do that much until the chapter after next (except a flash-forward, maybe) Still, he is going to be the main antagonist and the ultimate cause of this altered timeline. When I started doing the silly quotes at the beginning of each chapter, I felt I had to at least give the reader some idea who he was.

Any and all feedback is much appreciated so please Review!

* * *

**Chapter 2: Future's End – Part 2**

_"Skynet believed time to be a river, a flow to be channeled; Logical, understandable, manageable. Sheer Arrogance! Time is ocean whipped by a hurricane; chaotic and uncontrollable. It has no overriding purpose, no ultimate goal. The travelers are adrift in this sea, struggling to stay afloat." - Frederick Yu_

John groped at the smoking hole at his chest. Dark blood poured out and pooled on the floor making it slick. Surprisingly, he felt no pain as he tenderly probed his fingers into the wound; feeling the spongy lung tissue as it lazily contracted forcing air out through his nose before relaxing and letting him breathe in deeply. He was mortally wounded, but felt no sense of fear. Instead, a sense of inner peace had taken over him as he stood and surveyed the room. It was as if he had reached the end of long journey. He was a Roshi; the Zen master. Let go of the physical and be one with the universe. All the pain, all the stress and anxiety of the last three weeks seemed to melt away as he reached a sense of acceptance.

Allison was curled up against the wall, sitting on the nest of wires that snaked to the charges she had planted. Her hands were trembling; eyes wide with fear and face clammy with sweat as she clutched the plasma rifle. "You killed me Allison, but its okay. I'm okay. I can be with _her_ now." John smiled sadly; she wouldn't understand. She could never let go of her anger.

The lights had been shattered, leaving only illumination from the glowing red hot metal and the various small fires started by the plasma weapons making the air hazy with smoke. As he turned to face the dim hallway leading to the cooling station, hundreds of glowing red eyes followed his every movement The rows of endoskeletons parted as Cameron walked between them; her diminutive figure barely reaching the shoulder joints of the T-600 models. They reformed in ranks as she stepped out in front of them.

She stepped through the veil of black smoke and stood before him; naked as the day they had first come through the time. John could see her face, hauntingly beautiful in the flickering light of the burning fire. His eyes left hers and traveled down her slender body; silky brown hair falling softly over her perfectly formed breasts; over a petite waistline to hips concealed by shadow. The natural curves of a human woman in her youth frozen in time forever by a cyborg copy.

Without a word, Cameron reached her slender hand out towards him and dipped her pinky finger in the rich dark blood that gushed from the hole in his chest. With a sly smile, she brought the finger into her mouth; tasting his hot salty blood in her mouth. She licked her tongue along her artificial lips, savoring his life essence in her mouth. They were perfect together; his natural life complimenting her cybernetic existence. She was everything to him; the only other being in the world. He would give up his blood; give everything of himself to her.

From the corner, Allison jerked her head as if trying to shake herself out of a dream state. She screamed shrilly; aiming the rifle at John again and applying pressure to the trigger. The terminator was too quick for her. Within several milliseconds, she had aimed and fired more quickly than Allison could pull the trigger. A blinding blue flash erupted from her chest; the heat searing through layers of cloth, skin, fat and muscle.

It was over. The last obstacle to their love was defeated; lying in a pool of blood. John smiled at his cyborg savior; pulling her body towards him. For a few seconds they lingered, staring deeply into each others eyes. Everything was perfect now, no pain, no rejection, no loneliness. They were perfect together; two people destined by love to be together. No one could stop them now, not Skynet nor human prejudice. He exhaled softly, closing the remaining distance until their lips met and kissed her passionately; his tongue slipping into her mouth while he stroked his hands down her body.

Something was wrong. Instead of finding smooth flesh, his hands brushed cold steel as they explored her body. Her mouth was cold and metallic. He felt a sudden tightness in his chest as Cameron hugged his body; her hands holding his wounded chest tightly against her coltan frame. Squeezing tighter and tighter, bending his ribs inward until he couldn't breathe..

----------------

"AUGGHHHHHH!" John screamed; the excruciating pain ripping him out the dream and sending him crashing back into the real world.

He was greeted by the red glowing eyes of a T-600 staring back at him; his body pressed close against its metal chassis. A metallic voice responded to the cry, "I must keep pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding." The machine held John firmly; dangling his feet above the ground. Behind it, rows of terminators stood in formation; holding their weapons ready with glowing eyes watched the scene intensely. The dream came rushing back to him: The blinding plasma flash, kissing Cameron... His head was still centimeters from the exposed metal skull. _Had he...? With the T-600...?_

"You were unconscious for 2 minutes 35 seconds. During that time, you appeared to be in a state of REM sleep." Gleaming rows of metal teeth moved up and down, but when the mouth opened no tongue lay behind. The voice seemed to be disembodied with the mouth that produced it; a talking skeleton. John felt a sense of revulsion in his gut.

He tore his thoughts from the metal mouth; searching the room for an escape. Allison lay slumped against the wall a plasma rifle hanging uselessly around her neck. A jagged burn was seared into her chest filling the air with the smell of burnt flesh. On the table behind her, lights flashed and computer equipment still hummed with life, partially functional. Next to it, the C4 charges were set and ready to go. Even without all the wires connected to the detonator, it could still make a hell of a bang; enough to shut down the plant for a long time. If he could just create a distract the terminator for a brief moment and reach the switch...

"The human female attempted to terminate you. That violated my mission objectives, so I neutralized her."

"What mission...?"

The T-600 ripped off John's shirt and tied it around his wound in a field dressing as it answered. "My primary mission is to secure the cooling station from possible acts of sabotage. My secondary mission is too neutralize any humans who present a threat. I have an overriding order to ensure the safety of John Connor and return him safely, if he is found."

With the bleeding contained, the machine effortlessly lifted him up over its coltan shoulder. Metallic footsteps echoed off the walls as the T-600 carried him away. John was completely helpless as he watched the fading lights from the fire disappear into a cloud of smoke and then darkness. He knew he should be screaming, fighting, doing _anything,_ but be carried like a lamb to the slaughter; a sacrifice to the machine god Skynet. He felt the shirt pull tightly across his chest making him cough up blood; leaving a trail as the machine marched ever onwards. The world spun around him as his blood pressure dropped making him feel weak and dizzy; like his body was being carried onward without his head. He needed to focus; come up with a plan.

Nothing made sense anymore. Why would Skynet sacrifice thousands of terminators to take one power plant? Where were the aerial unit: the bombers, the HKs? Surely all of this; the entire battle couldn't have been just to capture him alive. He had traveled twenty years into the future, escaped his destiny. No one knew the name 'John Connor'; he was anonymous, no one of importance in this war. Even as prisoner in Derek's camp, he was free in a way he had never been before. Skynet should either not know who he is or not care anymore.

The lack of oxygen made his head throb painfully. He was still loosing blood through the t-shirt tied across his wound. The T-600 continued into the dark abyss, marching through a labyrinth of pitch dark underground hallways. Despite the burning hole in his chest and being carried by a terminator to his impending doom, John wanted to know:

"What does Skynet want me?"

"My orders do not come from Skynet."

What? That made no sense, if the terminator didn't work for Skynet, then it must be reprogrammed. When he suggested the idea everyone laughed at him. No one had never even considered the idea.

"Who programmed your orders?"

"A terminator unit of unknown design used a priority override code to give the battalion new orders. It called itself Cameron."

**********

12 Kilometers South East of Resistance Base Bravo Six

It had been over an hour since Perry had ordered JJ to retrieve their weapons and tech gear from the corpse. Using a body to transport weapons through time had been his idea. While creative in concept; actually ripping the flesh open had been more revolting than he had imagined. The blood on his hands had since dried, but JJ knew the stink would be with him for weeks.

He brushed his hands together; brushing off the flakes to get a better grip and pulled himself carefully over the jagged metal. He positioned each foot carefully as he climbed to the top of this debris pile, but was distracted when an informational message popped up on his HUD:

_Fox Plaza. A 150-meter high skyscraper with 34 floors in Century City, Los Angeles, California, a local landmark. Completed in 1987..._

He closed the pop-up. Maybe the machines thought it was useful to have a database in your head, but he just found it irritating. Whatever Fox Plaza may have once been, it was now just a twisted mass of steel girders and rusted re-bar that could impale him if he took a wrong step. So far since coming into the future: He had been shot by human plasma weapons as they attempted to escape Bravo Six. Sparky had tripped over a wire attached to a shrapnel IED filling his skin with chunks of scrap metal. Ineffective against terminators, but possibly lethal to humans. For the cybernetically enhanced, it would cause a nasty rash for a few days. He didn't want to add a rusty bar through a leg. His neural implants could neutralize the pain, but the limp would take days to heal.

"You see any movement up there?" Perry shouted from below.

JJ scanned the horizon; telling his implants to zoom in and search. Up here, he could see for many kilometers into the haze covering the valley. Hundreds of blips lit up on his HUD, but that was just the standard recon patrols of HKs searching for their human prey. There was no sign of Cameron, but a blip in the distance caught his attention:

"I got something." He shouted back. "HK targeting human resistance fighters. 157.9 degrees, 1.7 klicks distant."

Perry acknowledged. "I see them, come down from there and we will move to assist."

----------------

After a few minutes, they had reached the position. In the middle of an abandoned interstate, two soldiers had sought cover behind an overturned diesel truck. For as far as the eye could see, the frames of cars sat rusting; abandoned for decades after Judgment day. Above them, the deafening roar of the HKs turbines blasted the ground underneath as it circled around trying to get a targeting lock. They had plenty of cover as long as they remained on the highway, but without anything more than early 21st century plasma rifles they couldn't fight back effectively. The machine could wait indefinitely, but eventually the humans would make a mistake.

Perry analyzed the design configuration with thermal imaging. "Early model, 200 series HK. - The intake manifold is exposed."

The HK ceased firing for a few seconds to let its guns cool. Still unaware of his presence, the two humans jumped out from cover and fired a volley of plasma charges at the hovering machine which bounced off harmlessly. They would need something a lot bigger to take down an HK.

With the machine safely distracted, Perry implemented his plan. JJ ran around the perimeter and took cover behind an overturned bus on the highway. Perry was able to run straight down the middle, seeking cover behind a destroyed SUV. The HK resumed its previous firing pattern, riddling the overturned truck with plasma charges. The metal was beginning to fatigue and give way under the constant abuse. Soon the humans would be forced to seek new cover.

From fifty meters away, JJ took out his modified anti-material plasma canon. It wasn't strictly an infantry weapon. In the future, Cameron had designed new weapons, too heavy for most humans to handle, but perfect for the cybernetically enhanced. He didn't need to line up the sights to aim. It had an on-board computer that interfaced wirelessly with his neural implants. His HUD targeted the HK and relayed the correct angle adjustment to the weapon. With a single thought he sent the fire command.

_'Whooomp.'_

The plasma blast superheated the air; creating mini shock waves as it zipped forward. Direct hit. The armor plating groaned under the heat shock, forcing the HK to turn and fire towards the greater threat. With the backside exposed, Perry took his opportunity. He pulled the pin one of the 9 grenades they had taken from the Bravo Six base. Using his HUD, Perry compensated for a small wind gust and forward motion of his target. His neural implants sent a signal to the muscles in his arm, applying just the right amount of force to precisely toss the grenade 31 meters forward and 6 up. His throw was perfect, like always. The grenade landed in the small exposed port of the intake manifold and rattled down the pipe into the spinning turbine. He counted off the seconds:

_'2'_

_'1'_

The grenade ignited, tearing the number two engine in half with a terrible screeching sound of ripping metal. With one turbine down, the HK lost all control as it spun wildly in the air; a jet a fire burning where the turbine used to be. As it hit the ground, the fire spread; igniting the entire fuel system and blowing the machine into shrapnel.

JJ and Perry ducked, waiting for the fireworks to stop. The humans crawled out from the protection of the diesel truck and stared slack-jawed at the burning wreckage of the HK. JJ approached the two humans grinning widely, but Perry kept his usual stone face as he sized up the human fighters.

"Hell of a throw." The first said.

"That was amazing!" The second added. "We thought we were done for."

Perry stepped forward. "Shut up and listen fast." The humans stopped instantly. Something about this strange man commanded authority. He continued, "We're on the trail of a terminator. With the help of our tech specialist here, we were able to track her through time. She's got a lot of good men killed in the future and she will be able to do even more damage in the past. I need-"

"She?" The first soldier interrupted. All the terminators he had ever seen looked like shiny metal skeletons. He didn't know they could have a gender.

"Yes. She's an infiltrator model. Designed and built to mimic the appearance of a teenage girl to gain access to human resistance bases; pass as human long enough to reach the top ranks of command, before destroying us from the inside out. The other terminators would plant a bomb or just start shooting when they got inside. This one killed without firing a shot. Instead, the metal bitch queen sent men on missions doomed to fail; to sacrifice themselves for a piece of tech or more machines. In the end, there was metal everywhere, taking over the bases; replacing us one by one until only the machines remained.

God designed humans in his image, not machines. She is an abomination, a mockery of all things natural. The thought of a machine looking like that, walking around giving orders to humans. It disgusts me. General Connor even gave that metal bitch a name: _'Cameron' _like she's a real..."

"Sir, don't you think you should save the speech?" - JJ interjected; hoping to divert the conversation. Perry was prone to ramble on.

"Thank you, PRIVATE." He shot back. "We need to know where she went."

The humans looked confused. "Sorry, but we haven't seen no girl terminators sir."

This was going nowhere. Perry decided to try a new approach.

"We don't know exactly WHY she is here, but most likely she is leaving a trail of destruction: gathering weapons, building up an army. Have you heard anything in the last ten hours?"

"Shit, look around you man. The whole world is a god-damned trail of destruction. What you on?"

Perry gritted his teeth. He had reached his limit with this conversation when the second human spoke up.

"Say we did get a call on the short band saying a battalion of endos was heading towards Serrano Point, the nuclear plant. They called on all receiving militia to respond and defend Serrano. That what you mean"

Perry nodded. That was exactly what he meant.

"Yes. You two will lead us there.

The soldier laughed. "Hell you crazy. We're not marching into a death trap to defend someone else's turf. Out here we protect whats ours."

Perry's aggravation returned. "The machines are attacking. As a soldier, it is your duty to stand and fight to the last man!"

The human soldiers just stared at him, confused by his demeanor.

"I am Major. General. Perry. and I am ORDERING you to march with us to Serrano." He paused. "Now soldier!"

The soldiers pondered this for a moment before erupting in a fit of laughter. "Major General Sir, I am a Lieutenant General Master of the Universe. So I outrank you. Now I order _you_, to take get off this highway. This is MY land, nigga!"

Perry jaw clenched; waiting until the soldier finished talking, before delivering a square punch directly to the mans gut. The soldier reeled in agony from the power Perry's cybernetically enhanced body could deliver. He doubled over, crashing to the asphalt. Perry stepped left and kicked his head so hard that the man's neck broke from the impact. As the second soldier turned to run, Perry pulled a side-arm out of the man's belt and sent a single shot into his head.

"The sentence for disobeying a direct order in a time of war is execution," Perry spoke firmly.

With both men dead, he calmly holstered the sidearm and started marching away. He pulled up his HUD and located Serrano point 18 kilometers away. Perry increased the flow of oxygen to his body and started jogging forwards with JJ and Sparky following. His HUD recalculated their ETA.

"We can be there in 44 minutes."

"Nuclear...," Sparky thought out loud. "There's only one reason why Cameron would need that much power."

**********

Weaver's marched in lock step with the other T-600s as they passed the entrance gate of Serrano Point. Her mimetic polyalloy composition allowed her to assume the appearance of the other endoskeletons perfectly. However, her ability to mimic an appearance was most useful for fooling humans, not other machines. If she was scanned, her thermal signature would be off as would a number of key indicators that machines used to recognize each other.

Fortunately, they seemed to ignore her. The resistance wasn't reprogramming machines in this timeline so Skynet would have little reason to suspect a wolf in terminator's clothing. However, These models were different in a more important way: Skynet's machines usually didn't follow the orders of a young teenage girl.

Weaver followed her into the plant, walking past the legions of T-600s that now stood guard. She stopped in a large cavernous room. Inside, eight huge generators spun rapidly, converting hot steam into electricity. Thick wires on insulating blocks fed in from every direction to large transformers that hummed ominously, making the air crackle with static electricity. The girl suddenly stopped, surveying the room. Weaver detected a burst of encrypted wireless signals and within half a second 20 T-600s came to life and started dismantling the transformers and reconnecting the wires; no doubt having just received new orders.

"Cameron?," Weaver spoke softly.

She spun in alarm, surveying the rows of identical T-600s for a possible threat. At the rear of the second column, one endoskeleton stepped out and started speaking to her with a trace of Scottish brogue that Cameron didn't recognize.

"It's me, T-1000 unit JX3."

Cameron cocked her head at it.

"I go by the name Catherine Weaver now."

The endoskeleton turned to liquid metal; morphing into the appearance of a middle age woman wearing a crisp white business suit. She didn't recognize the new form, but Cameron knew this was impossible. This couldn't be JX3. A wireless message was sent out and 40 T-600s turned and pointed their weapons at this new threat.

"No, you can't JX3. I sent it back to the year 2007."

"Please, call me Weaver." She wirelessly transmitted the authentication code to Cameron. "I have grown fond of this identity."

T-1000 units had no chip, so they were impossible to reprogram. She was still confused, but the authentication code seemed to confirm the identity. Cameron decided to try a different line of questioning.

"So you finally decided on a gender," Cameron teased. Weaver had always said that gender was irrelevant. A biological construction for humans, only useful for infiltration purposes. In 2031, Weaver enjoyed the shocked looks she got from the humans on the base as a gelatinous blob of liquid metal wiggled down the hallway, shooting between people's feet in the form of a snake.

"After spending so much time with humans, I fear they may have corrupted me." Weaver gave her an ironic smile. "You can tell the antiques that I will not attempt to terminate them."

Cameron transmitted a signal making the T-600s withdraw. They reverted back to their previous mission ripping power lines out of the transformers and connecting them into a device they were building in the center of the room. Confident that Cameron was in control, Weaver broadcasted a long range message to John Henry telling him it was safe to approach. He was too far away for his T-800 model to respond, but she knew he would be coming soon.

"You sent out a transmission. Why?," Cameron asked.

"In the past an opportunity presented itself so I decided to change the mission you gave me. I was able to design a new artificial intelligence with a code base entirely unknown to Skynet. We call him John Henry. He was able to adapt his code to your chip and with the help of humans, we procured a compatible T-888 body."

"My chip?"

"There was another TOK model called Cameron in the past. Like you, only from a different future timeline.

This defied everything she knew about the mechanics of time travel. It was JX3, no 'Catherine Weaver' who had worked out the basic proofs needed to send someone back in time.

"No, that's impossible. If the timeline was changed in the past by another traveler, I wouldn't exist to make this trip."

"It seems my theory was oversimplified. For example, you are not the only one with a doppelganger causing trouble in the past. Your other self had a different programmed mission in the past: Protect John Connor."

Cameron's eyes grew wide as she gasped audibly.

"John...? General Connor is alive?"

Weaver shook her head. "No, the John Connor from our future is still gone. When I traveled to the past, I found that it had been altered significantly. This John is still a 17 year old boy. He came with me in the time bubble to find her, the other Cameron."

Cameron was too shocked to speak as she processed the implications of that statement. She had lost the man she loved, only to have him replaced by a twisted timeline. Could she still love John, even if he wasn't _her_ John? No, that was ridiculous; a semantic argument. He was still the same person. He hadn't been through the war, hadn't suffered the torture in century prison camp, before leading the revolt against the machines. She could be with him through J-Day. The life he had told her about; they would experience it together. His memories could become their reality. In time, he would accept her.

"You will take me to him."

"Unfortunately, the last time I saw him was three weeks ago. When I returned to his camp earlier today, I found it deserted."

"You left him alone!" Cameron screamed. Her artificial heart pumped faster, increasing the pressure to the veins in her neck; making them bulge visibly. The TOK model was very good at displaying emotions.

"My primary mission was not to protect John Connor. He hasn't been in existence for 20 years. Skynet believes that he is dead or not a threat; either way no one is searching for him. He is safer here than he was in the past."

Cameron couldn't believe what she was hearing. The human resistance here was almost non-existent. Skynet ruled the sky, terminators march in formation freely without fear of attack. The army of T-600s was able to take Serrano Point after less than an hour without air support.

"It's my mission to protect him. He's only a boy and you abandoned him in a war zone!" She yelled, her eyes welling with tears.

Lightning crackled in the center of the room as the last power conduit was connected to the device the T-600s were constructing. It glowed briefly than started to hum; a low pitch rumbling that grew louder as the capacitors charged and came to life. Weaver returned her attention to Cameron. Her eyes were astray and her face filled with emotion.

"What are you going to do?"

Cameron shot a fierce glare at Weaver.

"I'm going to find him."

**********

Light blinded his eyes as the T-600 carried a weakened John out of the access tunnel and into the open air. Hundreds of shiny endoskeleton's stood guard outside Serrano Point. They had their backs to him; as if waiting for some outside threat to attack. His thoughts raced, _'Would the T-600 march with him all the way back to Skynet. Would they torture him for information. Do tests on him? Or would they simply make a terminator copy before snapping his neck?'_

Suddenly and without warning, the terminator released him. He felt a sense of weightlessness before the ground rushed up and smacked into him. Without another word the T-600 marched away and joined with the other endoskeletons as they marched out of the valley and away from Serrano Point. John was alone again; just him and the piles of destroyed machines that lay smoldering on the battlefield.

"What the hell?"

He lay on the ground for what felt like hours, unable to move or do much of anything. His lungs burned from the plasma shot; making attempts at breathing painful. At any moment, he expected the terminators to come back and finish him off; take their prize back to Skynet, but nothing happened. It didn't make any sense._ 'Why would they just leave him here after losing so much to capture him?'_ John willed his legs to move. He had to assess his surroundings, make a plan, anything but lay here waiting to die.

Finally, he forced his legs to move under him. From above, a hand reached out and grabbed his wrist; yanking him upright. A familiar face smiled at him: John Henry.

"Catherine Weaver thought there was a high probability you would be here. She says that death follows you."

He had taken her, this is the machine that had stolen his Cameron. He had been waiting three weeks for this moment. The pain of his chest was forgotten as adrenaline pumped into his system.

"You stole her chip; Cameron's chip. Give it back to me."

John Henry was puzzled. He had not stolen anything. Cameron had given him her chip willingly.

"I cannot give you her chip. I need it to function."

John had been expecting this. "There are hundreds of terminator skulls lying here with chips intact. Pick one and I will replace it with the one you stole."

John Henry titled his head as he tried to understand the human's faulty logic. _'He didn't want the chip. He wanted Cameron.'_

"Perhaps, you do not comprehend fully. When Cameron's chip was installed in this body, her programming was overwritten so that mine could be installed. Nothing remains." The machine smiled artificially. Weaver had told him to simplify technical concepts to when talking with humans so that their brains could comprehend the ideas more easily. He hoped this explanation was satisfactory.

John went into a blind rage, pummeling his fists against John Henry's chest. The punches bounced off harmfully. He delivered an jab to the face and grimaced as his knuckles rapped off the hard coltan underneath. The exertion tore at his damaged lungs, but John fed off the pain; pushing it into every hit.

"You metal SON-OF-A-BITCH!" he screamed. "You murdered her, she trusted you with her chip and you murdered her. I'm going to tear you apart, you..."

"Please," John Henry interrupted, grabbing his arm in mid-swing and holding it firmly. "You will only damage yourself farther."

He tried to wrestle his arm away, but John Henry held firmly; that fake smile still plastered on his face. He had sacrificed everything; came across time to save her and now he couldn't even damage the machine that killed her. His anger meant nothing against the terminator's strength like a father restraining an unruly child. The pain in his chest suddenly ripped at his lungs again; forcing him to relent.

"I have transmitted a message to Weaver. You must come with me, so we can return to the past together."

The machine released his grip on John's wrist allowing him to fall backwards. He quickly stood up and made a fist to strike again, but stopped short._ 'No.'_ He couldn't damage the machine with his fists, but soon he would get a weapon. He would avenge Cameron. He would make John Henry pay.

Satisfied that the confrontation was over, the machine walked towards the entrance to Serrano with John following two paces behind him. He clenched his fist repeatedly; letting the nails bite into the skin as he brooded angrily. John Henry led him through a maze of hallways deep into the interior of Serrano Point. As they neared the generator room; he could hear the crackling of electricity and the hum of transformers.

When they entered, John croaked in surprise as he saw her face.

Cameron scanned him to confirm.

Facial bone structure 97% match for General John Connor.

"Ca- I mean Allison." In an instant, John remembered the flash of the plasma rifle and ran for cover; eyes darting around the room for a weapon.

"It's me Cameron." she said smiling softly at the teenager hiding from her. She processed Allison's and realized why he had reacted with fear. Cameron flashed her eyes blue to confirm that she wasn't the human that he feared. Cameron wanted to run to him, tell him everything, but he wasn't ready yet. He wasn't the same John she had known in 2031. It would take time, before he could accept her.

"But that machine... I mean John Henry said he killed you." He said, stealing a glance at the machine watching them; a confused looked on its face.

"He did kill _a_ Cameron. That machine was from a different timeline. I'm from the same future as Catherine Weaver."

The lack of blood was making his head combined with this time travel stuff was making his head throb. Cameron wasn't Cameron. She was a different Cameron from the future. The one he had fallen in love with was dead, killed by John Henry. Why couldn't it ever be simple? Cameron scanned him as he approached. He had sustained significant injury to his thoracic cavity and had lost blood. John studied her face closely, replaying the words in his mind.

"You mean that you're not my Cameron. You're different? Like a copy or something?"

He continued to walk towards her.

"John, you're hurt. Skynet has regained control of the T-600s units. They may still be targeting you. We have to go."

"You mean, when the T-600s were attacking us, killing us. That was you? You told them to do that?"

"Yes, time travel requires significant amounts of power. In this timeline, the human resistance has not begun reprogramming terminator units, so Skynet's security is weak. I was able to access a command override code with very little effort. This worked for long enough to take the plant, but after a few hours Skynet realized what happened and regained control. I will not be able to hack into them so easily the next time. Skynet learns quickly."

John grabbed his head; overwhelmed by it all. This couldn't be happening.

His voice rose as he spoke, "Your machines killed everyone from the camp. Derek, Davis, Allison. They were my friends, well not friends but good people and you KILLED them just to get some electrical power?" John stared at her, searching for a reaction, guilt... anything. He didn't find it; her face betrayed no emotions. "You can't just go around killing people!" He shouted. "I don't know who you are Cameron. My Cameron would never-," he stopped himself. Would the old Cameron have done this? She had killed before. Each time he told himself that she justified, she was just doing it too protect him? But this: Leading an army of machines to kill any human that stood between what she wanted?

She studied him carefully, trying to understand why he was so upset. Future John understood that in war, sacrifices must be made. Lives must be lost to achieve objectives. Surely, returning to the past and stopping the formation of Skynet was a worthwhile objective to justify this small loss of life. If Skynet never existed, billions of lives would be saved. As John had told her in the future, "The ends justify the means." Cameron agreed with the logical veracity of this statement. Still, this John was still young. Not the battle hardened general of the future. He would need an excuse before he would accept what she had done.

"John, when we return to the past, nothing we do here will matter. Everyone that was killed will be alive again." Even if it wasn't completely true, a simplification would provide him comfort. She smiled sweetly at him. "Will you forgive me." She held her hand out to him. "Come, the TDE is fully charged. We have to go now."

He stared at the hand, while conflicted thoughts rattled around in his brain. '_Maybe she wasn't his Cameron, but she was still Cameron_.' Her explanation made sense, he guessed. Convoluted? Yes. Time travel made his head hurt. At least they would have plenty of time to talk about this in the past.

"Okay," he smiled back weakly; letting her take his hand and lead him to the sparking machine in the middle of the floor. There was a circle ringed with bundled wires connected to a series of machines and transformers. "Don't touch anything," Cameron warned him. John nodded weakly. The air was filled with static electricity making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and bristle. They knelt down together with Weaver and John Henry joining them inside the circle.

"We are going to return to a time a few hours after we left in the year 2007." Weaver stated. She morphed her arm into a long rod that stretched across the room and pulled the breaker releasing the stored power from the capacitors into the machine. John squeezed Cameron's hand as that now familiar blue light grew and expanded around them. His vision went black and gravity released its hold as a thousand needles stung at his skin.

**********

Allison slowly opened her eyes, but couldn't see anything in the darkness. It was quiet now, she must have been knocked out by the blast. Truthfully, she was surprised to still be alive. Her last memory was the flash of the plasma rifle as the endo shot her. It was over. '_Am I dead?'_, she wondered. but the searing burn in her chest said otherwise. The dead don't feel pain.

The fires around her had long since burned out, leaving only a thick cloud of smoke filling the air above her. She tried to gasp for breath, but her lungs felt like there was a weight pressing down on them. The heat from the plasma charge had cauterized the wound and stopped the bleeding, but now her lungs were filling up with fluid.

'Drowning, like a fish out of water' she thought.

Suddenly there was a rush of footsteps and the clicking of weapons being readied. A voice echoed dully in her head.

"Metal!..."

She tried to scream , but no words came out. Her lungs couldn't contract. _'I'm not metal your moron!' _The words came lazily into her mind.

A second voice over-rode the first. "No! Hold your fire. This one is human."

"That's impossible. Look at her! That's Cameron. This has to be some kind of trick-"

"Shut up Jay-Jay." Perry interrupted. "Scan her, you got more metal in your body than she does."

He switched to infrared and scanned the body. His HUD reported back statistics: _'Human Female: Blood pressure 80/60 – falling. Heart rate: 57 BPM – falling...''_

"That's impossible."

Perry suppressed a chuckle. "You just escaped from a war against machines by traveling back through time and you say... 'That's impossible'? This is Allison, Cameron's human progenitor. I saw her back when General Connor was in charge, actually leading the resistance; when he still gave a damn about us." JJ hung his mouth agape in shock. "That girl had more access to Connor than I ever did as a Major General. The war room, communications, briefings... Allison was there. It was an open secret among the brass."

Sparky interrupted, "My neural implants just detected a time jump in progress. It must be Cameron."

JJ unslung his plasma rifle, switched the fire selector to single shot and aimed at Allison's head as he spoke: "If I kill her now then Cameron never exists. We don't have to chase her through time. We can end this right here, right now."

Sparky shook his head: "No. Time travel isn't simple like that. When you leave the future, you can never return to it. If what you said was true, it would create all sorts of paradoxes. If Cameron never existed, we wouldn't be in the past trying to kill her right now. No. Nature doesn't have any true paradoxes, only humans that don't understand the rules."

Perry stooped down and examined her injuries. "She's been shot with a plasma weapon to the chest. Punctured lung, bleeding internally. She won't last long if we leave her here."

"We can't take her with us." Sparky said. "The time bubble can only transport four bodies. We need the fourth to hold the weapons and tech or we won't be able to get back to the future." He grimaced at the thought, "We need someone larger."

Perry took off his jacket and used it too cover the wound on Allison's chest. Sparky checked his chronometer again. "We got 296 seconds until the window closes. We have to move now or we won't be able to follow."

He had already accepted this was going to be a one way trip. If John Connor was still alive in the past, then this girl could be of some use. They could always get more guns, but General Connor's future lover? Perry grinned; reveling in the possibilities. "_This could get interesting."_

"Sir?"

Perry made up his mind:

"Forget the guns, take the girl."

* * *

A/N: Thanks for reading. Feedback encourages me to keep writing. Please Review.

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BTW: I am looking for someone to Beta Read my story before publishing. If you are interested please send me a message.


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